Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.

Saturday, 12 September 2015

Hezbollah and the Syrian army foiled on Thursday an attack by the terrorists on the city of Zabadani, sources told al-Manar.

Field sources in the city said that the terrorists launched an attack on the allied forces in castles of al-Alali and Moza in northwestern Zabadani.

Hezbollah and the Syrian army thwarted the attack, killing and injuring 30 of terrorists, sources told al-Manar.

The allied forces have been since July 4 engaged in the battle of Zabadani, the last city under the control of terrorists in the Qalamoun region on the Lebanese border.

The ongoing battle is part of a wider operation launched by the Syrian forces and the resistance movement’s fighters on May 4, which has reportedly driven militants out of more than 90 percent of the territory in the mountainous region.

The allied forces repelled the terrorists’ attack, setting off explosive devices as well as striking their gathering points, according to the sources.

The clashes lasted for eight hours and caused the death of at least 20 of the Nusra terrorists and the injury of 30 others.
The allied forces have been since July 4 engaged in the battle of Zabadani, the last city under the control of terrorists in the Qalamoun region on the Lebanese border.

The ongoing battle is part of a wider operation launched by the Syrian forces and the resistance movement’s fighters on May 4, which has reportedly driven militants out of more than 90 percent of the territory in the mountainous region.

Disturbing footage emerged Friday of the way migrants are being treated inside Hungary's main refugee camp on the border with Serbia, with images showing families fed "like animals in a pen".

The video, shot secretly by an Austrian volunteer who visited the flashpoint Roszke camp on Wednesday, shows some 150 people wildly scrambling for bags of sandwiches thrown at them by Hungarian police wearing helmets and hygiene masks in a fenced-in enclosure inside a big hall.

Women and children were caught in the chaotic scrum as hungry people frantically tried to catch the bread flying through the air.

Many migrants too far back in the crowd climbed onto the fence, waving and shouting to get the officers' attention.

"It was like animals being fed in a pen, like Guantanamo in Europe," said Klaus Kufner, a volunteer who was with the woman who recorded the images, referring to the notorious prison camp where the US is accused of torturing inmates.

He stated that he and Michaela Spritzendorfer -- who filmed the scenes -- had driven together to Roszke to bring food, clothes and medication to help the thousands of refugees pouring over the border.

"It was inhumane and it really speaks for these people that they didn't fight over the food despite being clearly very hungry," said Spritzendorfer, the wife of a Vienna councilor with Austria's Green Party.

The footage, which was uploaded on YouTube late on Thursday and widely shared on social media networks, had more than 20,000 views by Friday morning.

The UN's refugee agency criticized the dire conditions at the Roszke camp earlier this week, with Hungary's hardline stance against migrants also angering other EU countries.

Harsh laws which could see migrants jailed for crossing its borders are due to come into force on Tuesday.

Hungary's right-wing government in late August completed a razor-wire barrier along its 175-kilometer border with Serbia but it is not proving to be much of an obstacle for desperate people fleeing war in Syria and Iraq.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has however ordered the building of an additional four-meter high fence that he wants completed by the end of October.

Russian Foreign Mnister Sergei Lavrov denied Moscow was ramping up its military presence in Syria, saying it was supplying its Middle Eastern ally with humanitarian aid and military equipment in accordance with existing contracts.

"Russian planes are sending to Syria both military equipment in accordance with current contracts and humanitarian aid," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters.

"We have never made our military presence (in Syria) a secret," he said, denying claims that Russia was beefing up its presence in the war-torn country.

"Russia is not taking any additional steps," Lavrov said.

US officials said this week that Russia was solidifying its foothold in Syria, sending ships, armored personnel carriers and naval infantry to the country in an apparent effort to prop up the Syrian government.

Lavrov rubbished suggestions that Russia's involvement in Syria would throw a wrench in the plans of a Western coalition to fight the Takfiri group, ISIL (so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant).

"This logic is incomprehensible to me," Russia's top diplomat said.

"The Syrian army is the most effective force that can stand up to the terror threat on the ground."

Lavrov said he had discussed his country's presence in Syria with US Secretary of State John Kerry in two phone calls in the past few days.

Lavrov said his American counterpart was concerned that Russia's support for Damascus would ultimately strengthen ISIL because its sponsors would be forced to ramp up their military and financial support.

"Well, that logic has been turned upside down," Lavrov said.

"Once again this is an attempt to appease those who are using terrorists in their fight against unwanted regimes."

في دائرة الضوء 08-09-2015 مع ناصر قنديل #قرن_الشيطان_سينكسر

Saudi fighter jets pounded several residential areas across Yemen on Wednesday and bombed the Yemeni capital as many as 25 times, killing and injuring more civilians.

The aggression war planes targeted the area of al-Nahzeh in Sana'a, killing four civilians and injuring seven others.

At least four other people also sustained injuries in the Saudi airstrikes in the area of Jamalan in the capital. Saudi airstrikes also hit the area of al-Hadeh.

Meanwhile, the Saudi-US fighter jets also pounded the province of Sa’ada, targeting a hospital and a residential area in the district of Dhaher.

The hostile warplanes also targeted a school in the district of Haydan in Sa’ada. There has been no immediate report of possible casualties.

In another development, Yemen's army and Popular Committees forces fired Katyusha rockets at Saudi troops in the area of Sahn al-Jin in the Yemeni province of Ma’rib on Wednesday (250 kilometers East of the capital, Sana'a) in retaliation for Riyadh's ongoing airstrikes.

A number of Saudi military vehicles were destroyed and some other items of military equipment were damaged in the attacks.

The Yemeni forces also fired rockets at a number of Saudi military bases in the Southwest of the Persian Gulf kingdom.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Yemeni national military and PC forces fired a barrage of rackets at a Saudi border guard headquarters in Dhahran al-Janub, southwest of the Persian Gulf kingdom.
No reports of possible casualties and the extent of damage inflicted were immediately available.

The Yemeni forces also targeted Saudi Arabia's Khojrah military site in the Saudi Jizan border region, leaving a number of Saudi soldiers killed and wounded.

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen for more than five months (168 days) now to restore power to fugitive president Abed-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed at least 5,788 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi warplanes are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

Thursday, 10 September 2015

September 7 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - While the Western media attempts to portray the sudden influx of refugees suddenly appearing out of no where at Europe's gates, the reality is that for years they have been gathering in expansive, well-funded refugee camps in Turkey.

Image: Turkey has eagerly invited 2 million refugees into their country to stay at camps funded by upward to 6 billion USD, not out of altruism, but to use refugees together with the US, NATO, and the EU, as a geopolitical weapon.

In fact, Turkey has brought in over 2 million refugees with a suspiciously eager "open door" policy and has spent upward to 6 billion USD on building and maintaining these immense camps. They have done so as part of a long-standing strategy to justify creating "safe havens" in northern Syria - essentially NATO invading and occupying Syrian territory, protecting their terrorist proxies within Syria's borders so that they can strike deeper toward Damascus and finally topple the government of President Bashar Al Assad.

US plans to carve out a "safe haven" or "buffer zone" in northern Syria stretch back as far as 2012 - before a real crisis even existed. In their "Middle East Memo #21," "Assessing Options for Regime Change," it was stated specifically (emphasis added):

An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.

The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via the presence of special forces as well. The approach would benefit from Syria’s open desert terrain which could allow creation of buffer zones that could be monitored for possible signs of enemy attack through a combination of technologies, patrols, and other methods that outside special forces could help Syrian local fighters set up.

Were Assad foolish enough to challenge these zones, even if he somehow forced the withdrawal of the outside special forces, he would be likely to lose his air power in ensuing retaliatory strikes by outside forces, depriving his military of one of its few advantages over ISIL.Thus, he would be unlikely to do this.

Unfortunately for US policymakers, little justification or public support underpins any of these plans to intervene more directly in Syria in pursuit of what is obviously regime change dressed up as anything but.

Bring in the Refugees However, in hopes of solving this lack of public support, the West appears to have taken a huge number of refugees created by its years of war upon the Middle East and North Africa, and suddenly releasing them in a deluge upon Europe. The Western media itself implicates Turkey as the source of these refugees, and reports like that from the International New York Times' Greek Kathimerini paper, in an article titled, "Refugee flow linked to Turkish policy shift," claims (emphasis added):

A sharp increase in the influx of migrants and refugees, mostly from Syria, into Greece is due in part to a shift in Turkey’s geopolitical tactics, according to diplomatic sources. These officials link the wave of migrants into the eastern Aegean to political pressures in neighboring Turkey, which is bracing for snap elections in November, and to a recent decision by Ankara to join the US in bombing Islamic State targets in Syria. The analyses of several officials indicate that the influx from neighboring Turkey is taking place as Turkish officials look the other way or actively promote the exodus.

This wasn't done until after years of staged terror attacks across Europe, in attempts to ratchet up fear, xenophobia, racism, and Islamophobia. Every attack without exception involved patsies tracked by Western intelligence agencies in some cases for almost a decade. Many had traveled to and participated in NATO's proxy war on Syria, Iraq, and Yemen before returning home to carry out predictable acts of violence.

Image: Even Western "international" organizations find it difficult to hide NATO's role in the refugee crisis with most migrants transiting through NATO-destroyed Libya, and NATO-member Turkey.

In the case of the infamous "Charlie Hebo" massacre, French security agencies followed the gunmen for years - even arresting and imprisoning one briefly. This surveillance continued up to but not including the final six months needed for them to plan and carry out their final act of violence. When asked why French security agencies ended their surveillance of known terrorists, they cited a lack of funds.

With Europeans intentionally put into a state of fear at home and in hopes of eliciting support for wars abroad NATO appears to now be undulating Europe with a tidal wave or refugees intentionally accumulated and cared for in Turkey either to flood back into NATO-established safe zones in Syria or into Europe to extort from the public backing for further military aggression.

Image: The Western media ensures that articles discussing the possibility of using the refugee crisis as justification to further decimate Syria includes lots of pictures of desperate refugees struggling to burst into Europe.

It state (emphasis added):

David Cameron is facing growing pressure to extend RAF air strikes into Syria as the worsening conflict threatened to drive increasing numbers of desperate refugees to seek sanctuary in Europe. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey became the latest senior figure to call for a renewed military effort to "crush" Islamic State (IS) in its Syrian heartlands. He also backed calls for British military intervention to help create "safe enclaves" within the country where civilians would be protected from attack by the warring parties in Syria's bloody civil war.

The Huffington Post's report would also state (emphasis added):

His intervention came after Chancellor George Osborne acknowledged that a comprehensive plan was needed to tackle the refugee crisis "at source". Speaking to reporters at a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Turkey on Saturday, he said that meant dealing with the "evil" regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as well as the militant jihadists of IS.

At the end of the day, the "refugee crisis" is yet another contrivance by the same special interests who first sought to intervene in Syria to back "freedom fighters," then to stop the use of "WMDs," and most recently to fight "ISIS." Now with all three failing to justify what is otherwise naked military aggression openly pursuing regime change in Syria as a basis for wider confrontation with Iran, Russia, and even China, "refugees" are being used as human pawns to provoke fear and rage across Europe. River toSeaUprooted Palestinian

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

September 5, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - "Spontaneous." "Genuine." Defiant." The US State Department's marketeers have used these labels in attempts to differentiate its latest wave of global "color revolutions" from the now tired, ineffective, and familiar formulas used everywhere from the US-engineered "Arab Spring," to the Euromaidan in Ukraine, to Bersih 4.0 in Malaysia.

The latest target is Lebanon where protests have begun in the streets of the capital, Beirut. Branded the "YouStink!" marches, the alleged provocation was dysfunctional municipal garbage collection services. However, very predictably, the protests have shifted quickly from what could have been perceived as legitimate demands to outright calls for regime change.

Color Revolutions 2.0

Just recently in Armenia, the US conducted what appeared to be a test run of its new and improved "color revolution" system of regime change. It attempted to create a movement with little if any initial political affiliation and with deeply hidden ties between protest organizers and their US State Department affiliations. Ultimately the so-called "Electric Yerevan" protests, whose alleged grievances were rising electric bills, spent so much time trying to convince Armenians and people around the world that they weren't a US-backed mob, they never succeeded in building up sufficient momentum to move on to the next step.

The trick was to first use rising electrical costs as a pretext to stage the protests, then quickly swing them around to demand a change in government. Likely, provocations and violence were planned for later stages, as well as opportunities for America's client opposition parties to take over and swell the ranks of street mobs with their supporters.

In Armenia, America's next generation of color revolutions failed.

In Beirut, however, it seems that the protests have made it at least to the point where the alleged pretext - piles of garbage - have now been replaced with demands for regime change.

Despite the 2005 so-called "Cedar Revolution" being exposed as entirely US-engineered, paving the way for the expulsion of Syrian troops from Lebanon and an Israeli attack on the country the following year, many even in the alternative press have been taken in by what should be an obvious, albeit more carefully concealed, follow-up to 2005's events.

Spot the Leaders, Follow the Money

Transcending emotional appraisals of street mobs and reciting the alleged demands and motivations of the protesters themselves, protests are like anything else in the real world - they require leaders, organization, money, logistics, and infrastructure to function.

The "YouStink!" protest is no different.

Trawling through the Western media's reports, several names are repeatedly mentioned as "organizers" and "leaders."

They include Asaad Thebian, an alumni of the US State Department's U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). In 2014, Thebian would be standing in front of American flags, and behind a podium with the US State Department's seal affixed to it at a MEPI event, berating the Lebanese government. Now in 2015, he is attempting to overthrow it.

"We started as dozens of protesters and now we're thousands," Asaad Thebian, an activist with the You Stink! campaign, said during Friday's press conference. "We are demanding parliamentary elections."

In Beirut’s symbolic Martyrs’ Square recently, protesters have chanted, “The people want the downfall of the government” and “Revolution!” Some have drawn parallels between these rallies and the demonstrations that swept many Arab countries in 2011 and 2012, which led to the toppling of a number of regimes in the Middle East and North Africa.

"This is not similar to what happened in Egypt or elsewhere where people were manipulated, or without greater political awareness," Elefteriades exclusively told IBTimes UK from Beirut.

Elefteriades, in addition to claiming somehow their protest is different, would also attempt to assuage fears of a power vacuum forming if the current government was ousted:

"There is a leadership that is ready to take over and there will not be a vacuum," Elefteriades explained. "There are many people, with great capacities, but that are still suffocated by this political elite and this new class will never be able to lead this country because those in place don't want to give them space. So, as soon as that old political class will have left, there will be the emergence of a new political class, from one day to the next."

There is also Lucien Bourjeily, a theater artist who in 2012 organized a London showing of "66 Minutes in Damascus." The London Guardian would review his play, in which the audience was "immersed" in the experience of being a "political prisoner" of the "crumbling Assad regime" in Syria.

MP Walid Jumblatt tweeted on Sunday that yesterday's protest in Down Town Beirut truly expressed the pains suffered by the Lebanese. He compelled those responsible for You Stink movement not to allow political parties to take advantage of this "spontaneous movement" and abort it prematurely. He also urged the movement's organizers to study the proper mechanism to execute their demands.

Jumblatt's calls are similar to those made by US-proxy political opposition parties in Armenia who insisted the protests were "spontaneous" and urged the clearly politically motivated movement to remain 'unpolitical.' An added touch to Lebanon's current round of protests was the protesters rejecting Jumblatt's support for the movement. It is likely that Jumblatt and others will end up literally on stage leading protests if they escalate long enough before sectarian violence is finally triggered.

Jumblatt role is significant and his name should be familiar to those following events in the Middle East. It was Jumblatt who conspired with then US Vice President Dick Cheney on how best to undermine neighboring Syria in the years leading up to the 2011 war. Revealed in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's 2007 report "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" Jumblatt suggested using the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a scheme that even at the time had already gotten underway.

Hersh would report:

Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.

Hersh would also report that funding was already being channeled by the US and Saudi Arabia to the Brotherhood. Of course, by 2011, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood along with Al Qaeda would use those resources to begin an armed confrontation with the Syrian government which rages on to this day. The events Jumblatt helped set in motion in 2007 and the war in Syria that has played out since 2011, is linked directly to the "YouStink!" protests.

Considering that the various common threads between all involved in Lebanon's current protests include US backing and an overt hatred for Syria, claims that sectarian motivation and politics do not drive "YouStink!" are patently false - an intentional misdirection predicated on "piles of garbage" and repetitive slogans claiming somehow this revolution is not just another US-engineered color revolution.But like in Armenia earlier this year, it is just another US-engineered color revolution.

First Piles of Garbage, Then Piles of Rubble

The ultimate goal is to create chaos in Lebanon sufficient enough to disrupt Hezbollah's operations regionally against the army of terrorist the US and its regional allies, including supporters of "YouStink!" helped organize as far back as 2007. As in the past, protests in Lebanon are aimed not at improving the future of the Lebanese people, but aimed instead at disrupting the stability of neighboring Syria.

What follows these disingenuous protests is likely a rerun of what followed the so-called "Cedar Revolution" in 2005. After that admittedly US-backed protest and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, Israel conducted extensive air raids and even a ground invasion of the country in the following year. Despite the impression that the "Cedar Revolution" left Lebanon particularly vulnerable, US-backed Israeli operations against Lebanon ended catastrophically for Tel Aviv. The air campaign failed to achieve any strategic or even tactical objectives and the ground invasion was essentially repelled with Israel calling off the operation before reaching the Litani River - the stated objective of Israeli ground forces.

If "YouStink!" can evolve into a sufficient level of chaos undermining Hezbollah in Lebanon, and with the organization's resources already stretched in neighboring Syria fighting terrorist armies backed by the US and its regional allies, Israel will likely be used again in a 2006-style conflict or worse in the hopes that this time the dynamics of the region are decidedly working in the West's favor.

Regardless of the outcome of "YouStink!,"the additional pressure political destabilization in Lebanon puts upon Damascus and Tehran can only detract from efforts to restore peace and stability across the Levant.

"YouStink!" organizers claim they are fighting for the future of Lebanon. In reality, they are jeopardizing not only Lebanon's future, but that of the entire region. They are attempting to strike a match in a region already parched by the heat of the fires of nearby conflict. If "YouStink!" succeeds in their true objectives, they will bring immeasurable suffering to all in Lebanon and to many more beyond their borders. And as in the wake of the "Cedar Revolution," the only parties that stand to benefit are the US and its regional allies who seek nothing less than Lebanon's complete and perpetual failure as a sovereign state.